9 miles.

Last night I got a call from a good friend of mine, one of the few other women I truly enjoy running with.  I have mentioned her on this blog before, she has a little boy who has been going through cancer treatments since the beginning of 2011.  The little guy had his final treatment several weeks ago and has now been declared officially cancer-free!  He had his central line removed a few days ago and now doesn't need to make a trip to the doctor or hospital for at least 3 months - wonderful news for this sweet family that has been through so much all year.  So, she wanted to go running together and asked what my plans were for a long run this weekend.  This is actually a "scale-back" week for me and if I went by my schedule, I would have only done 6 miles.  She wanted to do 13, so we compromised at 9.  My husband even joined us as we did a 9 mile loop.  It was raining all night and I was worried we might be running in the rain, but it let up just in time for us to head out this morning, and it wasn't even all that cold, windy - yes, but not too cold.  We had a great run and it felt so good to be able to catch up with her.  We talked so much that I wasn't really paying too much attention to how fast we were going - remember, she is a sub-3:45 marathoner - and although we were taking one minute walk breaks every 4 minutes, we finished the run with a very decent average pace of 10:50 min./mile.  That's much faster than I've been used to doing my longer runs, so hopefully I won't feel too sore tomorrow.